As a serial entrepreneur and management consultant, I'm interested in the unique dynamics of business partnership. Follow me to read about my personal experiences with partnership, as well as to learn more about how other partnerships establish the ground rules for collaboration and compensation; how they foster harmony and resolve conflict; and what tools business partners use to evolve their relationship as their business grows.

Plan Early, Succeed Later (Or Risk Failure)

One of the best practices I learned from my last venture was the annual partnership summit. For half the years we were in business together, my partners and I would take a day or two away from the office early in the year to plan for the twelve months ahead. One of my partners dubbed it the “Partner Pajama Party” because the first year we just holed up in a hotel suite and ordered room service until we got through the agenda.

We used the time to discuss topics that required deeper conversation than we could handle in our weekly meetings: operational questions; sources of tension and conflict; and game plans for new business/marketing initiatives. At the end, we’d recount successes from the previous year as a way to appreciate each other and the hard work we put in our business. Someone would take notes to document decisions and next steps.

Looking back at the minutes from those meetings, it’s gratifying to see how many of the intentions became reality. It’s also proof of how much you can achieve when you work as a team to develop an actual strategy. The very existence of those planning sessions can be indicative of the overall health of your relationship; in hindsight, the years we skipped the ritual were our most difficult. Maybe it was impossible to come together at those times; maybe it was a missed opportunity.

The good news is, it’s an easy habit to start right away. Here are some tips to maximize productivity:

Do:

Make it a priority. Schedule it within the first quarter — the earlier the better — so that it doesn’t fall off the radar and so that you can make the most of or reject opportunities that come your way based on your strategy.

Take it offsite. Tell clients you’ve got an all-day meeting with limited access to email. Empower your team to make decisions or have a meeting the day before to go over priorities so they can work independently.

Set the agenda. Invite everyone to contribute topics for discussion and then prioritize them together. If the list gets long, either extend your day or schedule a second day. Remember that this is a process and if it takes longer than expected, it means the meeting is overdue. Do not undermine the process by cutting topics or discussion short in the interest of time. That issue will inevitably rear its head again, so you might as well deal with it now.

Get specific. Decide who will take responsibility for each task; who will follow-up to make sure things got done; and who will initiate the periodic check-ins to make sure the plan is working.

Schedule a mid-year evaluation. We never did this. We managed to most of our goals done anyway, but in some cases, changing direction or resetting expectations might have served us better.

Don’t:

Resist the urge to turn this into a vacation and do not combine it with other special events. One year, we tacked the partner retreat onto my birthday celebration. While it was nice to write off some of the expense, it was not nice to discuss lay-offs and worst case scenarios the day of my birthday. It was also not fun to miss out on activities with friends because meetings started late or ran long. I also felt guilty about my fancy dinner after looking at abysmal projections all day.

If you decide to have the meeting out of town, do not bring partners and spouses. It changes the dynamic and inhibits authentic exchanges because of the pressure of having “family dinners” at the end of each day. Frankly, I’m not sure how fun this tagging along for this kind of meeting is for the spouses anyway, especially in a year when the economics or interpersonal dynamics aren’t working.

Set boundaries for clients. Otherwise, you’ll end up spending the majority of time working on projects. It’s distracting and it saps energy that you need to collaborate. Also, if some of you managed to clear the deck while others are still in responsive mode, it creates the perfect conditions for resentment if the meeting gets drawn out to accommodate repeated interruptions. If it’s in the middle of a big deadline or crisis, move the meeting back so everyone can be present.

Do you and your partners set aside time for planning, or will you in 2013? Share your experience and tips for success in the comments or tweet me @furiouslymandy using the hashtag #committed.

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